Boost net training stimulus by fine-tuning movement patterns and skills, better acclimatizing to demands of the session.
Too many trainers treat warming up as a tedious ritual or an afterthought, failing to realize that an ineffective warm-up sabotages strength gains and increases injury risk. Skipping or rushing this phase leaves your muscles cold, your mobility restricted, and your technique unrefined – setting the stage for poor performance and potential setbacks.
Without a precise warm-up strategy, you waste energy, limit your range of motion, and compromise neuromuscular coordination. This gap in knowledge undermines your own training, but it will also negatively impact your clients' training – and oftentimes, they're more at risk of injury due to their relatively lower training age.
Predictably, the antidote is actually warming up – but without a methodology and objective to the warm-up, you're back to square one: "Why should I bother to begin with?". This newsletter aims to define end goals that a warm-up should achieve and explain the corresponding rationale.
An effective warm-up is built on three things.
Constructing an effective warm-up is only possible after understanding the three principles that the pillars are built on:
- Core Temperature
- Movement Restrictions
- Skill Tuning
The science behind each warm-up component.
${component=BasicCard}Core Temperature
Elevating core temperature improves blood flow around the body and helps buffer the production of hydrogen, which leads to less of a burning sensation. Warmer muscles are less stiff and produce more force, allowing smoother, more powerful movements – stiffer, cooler muscles are much more prone to tears and injuries. This physiological shift is essential to prepare your body for lifting safely at maximal or near-maximal intensity.
${component=BasicCard}Movement Restrictions
Movement restrictions stem from tight or over-contracted muscles and joint stiffness, often in key areas like the hips, shoulders, and thoracic spine. These limitations reduce your range of motion and disrupt movement patterns, increasing injury risk. Addressing these restrictions involves targeted myofascial release techniques as well as static and dynamic stretching that modulate the nervous system and restore mobility.
${component=BasicCard}Skill Tuning
Skill tuning is the deliberate rehearsal of the main lift you will perform. It involves progressively loading the movement to refine motor patterns, optimize technique, and build confidence before reaching your working weight. This neuromuscular priming ensures confidence when you start your working sets so that you don't have to focus on both "remembering the technique" and executing with max effort.
Integrate all three principles for the most complete warm-up.
To elevate your lifting sessions, you must implement all three warm-up pillars cohesively. Each component builds on the other to prime your body for the best possible workout.
${component=Step} Ignite your core temperature and elevate your heart rate.
Begin with 5–10 minutes of rhythmic cardiovascular activity at a moderate intensity to increase muscle temperature and blood flow. A bike or treadmill works perfectly, but if you want to get even more specific for an upper body workout, try an airbike or ski ergometer.
Don't push yourself until exhaustion – remember, you still have a workout to get to. But go until you're feeling warm and are working up a mild sweat, then move on to the next phase.
${component=Step}Target range of motion restrictions.
Next, apply focused myofascial release using tools like foam rollers or lacrosse balls on tight areas. Hold pressure for 30 seconds or until tension dissipates. A massage gun also works well in this context.
Alternatively, stretching and mobility drills fall into this category – so make use of them here. There isn't a single right approach: use the modality of reducing muscular tone (tightness) that you have found works best for you.
${component=Step}Prime your brain for the task at hand.
Finally, perform progressive warm-up sets of your main lifts, starting between 25-50% of your working weight and increasing incrementally. The size of the increment depends on the complexity of the exercise, your comfort level, and how long you've had this specific exercise in your program.
For heightened effect, use a longer tempo during the first few warm-up sets than you would use during your working sets, or use pause reps. The additional time your muscles spend under tension increases your spatial awareness and skill patterning – just make sure you do your last few warm-up sets at maximum velocity to psychologically prepare for your heavy sets.